Medgar Evers, NAACP's first field secretary for the state of Mississippi stands nearby a sign of the state in this 1958 file photo. / Associated Press

by Olga Hajishengallis, USA TODAY

by Olga Hajishengallis, USA TODAY

Born and raised in Decatur, Miss., Evers was drafted into the Army in 1943, where he witnessed segregation that fueled his civil rights efforts. In 1954, Evers became the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi. After black teenager Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, Evers raised awareness of the crime and helped witnesses who had testified against Till's killers leave Mississippi. Evers also served as assistant secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Evers was assassinated in 1963 by a white supremacist, who was convicted of the crime in 1994 after two trials in the 1960s resulted in hung juries. His wife, Myrlie Evers-Williams, became the NAACP's first female chairperson in 1995.

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)

Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Miss., and earned her living as a sharecropper and timekeeper on a plantation. After trying to register to vote in 1962, she was fired by her employer. In 1963, she was arrested on a trumped-up charge in Winona, Miss., and beaten so severely while in jail there that she suffered kidney damage and was left partially blind. She became a key organizer of the 1964 Freedom Summer effort to register Mississippi blacks to vote. That same year, she helped lead a group of "Freedom Democrats" to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, where they demanded to be seated as the Mississippi delegation in place of the all-white, segregationist official delegation. Hamer testified to a convention committee about

the violence that she and other civil right activists had suffered. The Freedom Democrats were given two at-large (but non-voting) seats at the convention, along with a promise that the party's 1968 convention would bar state delegations that discriminated against blacks. Hamer continued her work by serving as a delegate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention and speaking about the civil rights movement.

Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998)

Carmichael, a Trinidadian immigrant, was attending Howard University when he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Carmichael was jailed in Mississippi in 1961 during the Freedom Rides and went to work for SNCC full time after graduation, eventually rising to chairman. In the mid-1960s, he popularized the term "Black Power" and openly questioned the civil rights movement's prevailing philosophy of nonviolence, as well as its alliances with white activists.

A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979)

The son of a poor preacher, Randolph was born in Crescent City, Fla. After graduating from Jacksonville's Cookman Institute (now part of Bethune-Cookman University), he helped found the Messenger, an African-American socialist journal. Randolph became a labor organizer and is best known for founding the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the country's first successful black labor union. Other major achievements for Randolph included urging Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman to end discrimination in defense industries and armed services, respectively. He went on to found the Negro American Labor Council, which initiated the March on Washington, and was one of the co-founders of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He continued his efforts for racial and economic equality throughout his life.

Roy Wilkins (1901-1981)

Born in St. Louis and brought up in St. Paul, Wilkins graduated from the University of Minnesota, where he became involved in civil rights efforts. After working at The Call, a black newspaper in Kansas City, he joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he rose through the ranks to become executive director, a post he held from 1964 to 1977. He co-founded the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, helped organize the 1963 March on Washington and worked with Martin Luther King on a number of campaigns. President Lyndon Johnson awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1967, and he led the U.S. delegation to the first United Nations International Conference on Human Rights in 1968.

Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

Marshall was born in Baltimore to a middle-class family. After graduating from Lincoln University, he earned his law degree from Howard University. Marshall served as chief counsel for the NAACP and won landmark civil rights cases. Among his legal victories were rulings granting blacks the right to vote in Texas primaries, making segregation illegal on interstate transportation, and, in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional. He became the first African-American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, and he served on the court until his retirement in 1991.

Ralph Bunche (1904-1971)

Born in Detroit, Bunche graduated from UCLA and earned a doctorate from Harvard University. He helped establish the political science department at Howard University, as well as the National Negro Congress, which promoted labor and civil rights. He was a key figure in the founding of the United Nations and served the U.N. for 25 years. In 1950, Bunche became the first person of color to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of his efforts to resolve Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. He participated in the 1963 March on Washington, as well as the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March.

James Meredith (1933-)

Born in Kosciusko, Miss., Meredith served nine years in the Air Force before becoming, in 1962, the first African American to enroll at the University of Mississippi. That enrollment came only after he took his challenge to segregation to the Supreme Court, and President Kennedy sent in federal marshals and Army troops to protect him. After obtaining a degree in political science, Meredith got a law degree from Columbia University. In 1966, he was wounded by a sniper while on a civil rights march. He later worked as a stockbroker and served on the staff of North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms.

Diane Nash (1938-)

Nash was born in Chicago and attended Fisk University in Nashville. Experiencing Jim Crow segregation at Fisk, she got involved with SNCC and the SCLC, started participating in and organizing sit-ins, and came to play a leadership role in the Freedom Rides. She also headed SNCC's direct-action campaigns. She was given the Rosa Parks Award by the SCLC in 1965. She went on to teach in Chicago public schools, while she also remained active in welfare support and housing advocacy efforts.

John Lewis (1940-)

Born to a family of sharecroppers in Troy, Ala., Lewis enrolled at the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville. While there, he participated in several student sit-ins aimed at integrating businesses such as movie theaters and restaurants. He was one of the founding members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee . After graduating from the seminary, he was elected to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference board and went on to become the chairman of SNCC. Inspired by Martin Luther King, Lewis was a major figure in many of the watershed events of the civil rights movement. He was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington in 1963, and he served as coordinator for voter registration drives during the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964. Lewis was one of the leaders of the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., and suffered a fractured skull when police attacked the peaceful marchers. Lewis later served on Atlanta's City Council and was elected to Congress in 1986. He is currently serving his 14th term in the House of Representatives.